With around 50% of marriages ending in divorce it’s clear that it’s easier to mess up relationships than it is to create healthy, lasting ones. Today’s guest helps people improve relationships in a surprising way — by lowering your expectations and raising your standards.

Show notes

There is no doubt that relationships are challenging. It’s hard enough to be a human with your own hopes and fears, let alone navigate someone else’s.
 
Over the years, while I can’t say relationships are not challenging for me, they are becoming smoother, with fewer conflicts and more steady love and connection. It has taken a lot of personal work to get here and I am always looking for people who can help speed up the process for you, so there can be less pain and more pleasure and connection.
 
Today’s Man Alive podcast guest, Jeff Howard, is a therapist who has found that there are a handful of elements humans need to be and stay well. Jeff brings his experience with clients, along with humility from his own relationships, to support people to have more satisfying relationships.

In this awesome and heartfelt conversation we discussed:
  • How to decrease relationship struggles by lowering your expectations and raising your standards
  • Moments of choice — generosity vs. getting back at someone
  • The benefit of a growth mindset, rather than a fixed mindset, in relationships
  • Productive discomfort — the ability to tolerate discomfort for the sake of growth
  • How to speak from your mature parts, to your partner’s mature parts

This is an awesome conversation that will help make your relationships healthier and easier! When you’re done with this one, check out this one on healing beliefs about sex and intimacy with Dr. Hazel Grace.

Links:

Connect with Jeff Howard

https://www.threeleavescounseling.com/

Connect with Shana James

Website: shanajamescoaching.com/3ways

Curious what you’d need to become a better leader and lover? Take the quiz

For Women: Modern dating doesn’t have to be a nightmare for women

Bio:

In Jeff’s years of sitting with people–as a friend, father, lover, partner, bartender, and a therapist for the last 8 years–he has found a few things to be irrefutably true about us: we humans need only a handful of elements in our lives to help us be–and stay–well. There is no magic in these things themselves.

That is, the components of wellness are not imaginary and we need not cast spells for them to appear, nor do we need to attempt to buy them on the internet, or surrender our day-world lives to become an ascetic; and, with that being said, once these powerful elements are in our lives, in our bones, and in our hearts, there is no unlearning what they feel like and how vital they are for our surviving and our thriving. 

Jeff believes we can never escape pain or heartbreak in life. What we can do is work to reduce our attachment to the outcomes of our experiences and encourage ourselves to accept what is, rather than lament what is not. Jeff sees that as humans, we have an incredible capacity for resilience and adaptability and we possess the potent skill to accept what is, and work with that.

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